There have been many approaches taken in providing electronic communications with a multimeter. One such approach is including a dedicated communication ports and supporting circuitry in the multimeter for the purpose of communicating with another device. For example, these multimeters have terminals for GPIB (general purpose instrument bus), USB (universal serial bus) or LAN (local area network) interface. A user connects the appropriate connector to the communication terminal on the multimeter and the other device to allow communication between the two. Another approach to providing communications with a multimeter is to include a wireless interface and supporting circuitry that are used for communications. For example, these multimeters include infrared or radio frequency communication interfaces. Communication between the multimeter and the device can occur when the two are placed within range of one another.
Although the previously described approaches provide the multimeter with the ability to communicate with external devices, there are considerations to be made. In the case of including dedicated communication ports in the multimeter, there are additional manufacturing costs involved with building such a multimeter. Another consideration is compromising durability of the multimeter and its resistance to the elements because the port represents another physical element of the multimeter that can fail and the opening can expose internal components of the multimeter to the elements. As for including wireless communication interfaces, there are added costs associated with materials and manufacturing. Moreover, battery life for a multimeter can be decreased due to the added power consumption from communicating through a wireless interface.
Therefore, there is a need for an alternative solution to communicating with a multimeter.